Framing Frame - Day 3

The third and final day of Framing Frame is stealth-based. It's possible to succeed dirty, and it'll likely devolve to be dirty the first few times you try it. However, succeeding will bring incredible rewards, and you won't have to deal with an Escape sequence when you're done.

The entire purpose of the contract was to frame a senator. You start on his roof and need to infiltrate his house. You need to steal five electronic items, allowing Bain to upload the scandalous information. If you can do so without tripping the alarms, you'll be able to access the senator's vault of gold, allowing you to leave with a huge bonus. If stealth isn't possible, the gold will lock, but you'll still have a couple million in your offshore account if you can get out alive.

A laptop sits on the roof, and any player can interact with it to see inside the senator's house through hidden cameras installed inside the paintings you stole in Framing Frame - Day 1. The exact locations of the paintings vary from instance to instance. The five electronic items will significantly change locations randomly as well. The guards inside will change their starting locations and patterns, and the cameras will move around a bit too.

There are two “final” rooms. If you have to be dirty, you'll need access to a server room. If you're clean, you can access the vault. Each room has one of three locations in which it could be.

Once again, you'll want to at least attempt stealth if you possibly can. Everyone needs to come in silenced weapons. The player operating the cameras should be mic'ed, or it may take too long to relay information. If one particular player is incredibly good at stealth, it may behoove the team for that player to do most or all of the work.

If a player on your crew is bad at stealth or doesn't have the right Skills, it may be best for them to just stay up on the roof and standby in case things break down. The player operating the camera, in fact, should always come in with his best weapons and armor, since he'll only join everyone else inside if things turn sour.

When one player is operating the cameras, he can sweep them with the mouse. The cameras want to return to their original positions, so it'll take several sweeps to get them to cooperate. If the camera picks up any enemy, he'll gain a red outline; if it picks up any of the senator's five electronic objects, those will outline in yellow. There are also up to two keycards somewhere in the house, but neither one will highlight.

The highlight is important, because it will show for all players, not just the camera operator, for a few seconds. This can quickly convey where enemies are patrolling, even if the camera operator isn't mic'ed.

If you're one of the ones trying to infiltrate, move slow, and stay low. There is no Casing Mode, so you'll have your guns out from the start. You can kill up to two guards and use their pagers; after the third, the dispatcher will no longer believe them, and they'll summon the cops anyway. If the person interacting with the pager has the Smooth Talker skill from the Mastermind tree, the limit goes away. You can shoot cameras as well, but a guard will summon the cops if he sees a broken one. Coordinate with your team as you move through the house if you're split up. You don't want to accidentally kill a guard if one of your teammates already killed two.

Once all five items are taken, bring them to the roof. Bain will tell you how to set them up, and you can do it peace. After that, he'll tell you about the gold vault, which will behind one of three bookshelves in the house. Once you locate it, you'll also need to start depositing bags of coke in the senator's living room. You can throw them in from the roof if you break the skylights, or you can buy the “Bag Shortcut” asset and throw them down a vent. Of course, you can always just walk them down as well.

With the coke planted, you need to open the vault door. There is an office with a desk near the corner, which sits next to a room with a white door (one of the possible locations for the server room). Interact with the PC, and the door will open. The vault has a bunch of lasers, and touching any will summon the cops.

You can interact with the computer again to drop the lasers. Have another player interact with it, then run in. Start bagging the gold and flinging it out, since the lasers can't stay down long. It's possible to do this part by yourself if you have maximum endurance and sprinting speed and were lucky to have the vault nearby, but it's incredibly difficult.

The PC can be interacted with again to drop the lasers as often as you wish; if you're playing multiplayer, have each player grab a bag and fling it out into the hall, then wait for the other player to activate the computer again. Don't risk taking more than two bags of gold per trip, or you'll risk tripping the alarm. If you're alone, you won't be able to take more than one per trip.

If you can get the gold to the roof, toss the bags near the laptop to secure them. Once that's done, you can exit the same way, and you'll have an insane amount of cash to spend as you will.

If the gold seems risky, you can still complete the rest of the mission with stealth and ignore the gold. You'll be well-paid, just not quite as much as you could.

Unless you have Smooth Talker from Mastermind and luck out on the locations of the randomized objects, it will devolve into a fight. The cops tend to be a bit stronger in this level than the others at the same difficulty level.

If the alarms go off, then the vault will lock, and there's no way you'll get the gold. However, the solution to accomplishing the main objective becomes much more direct. You'll need to break into the server room, which will be behind one of the three white doors, then interact with the computer there to let Bain start the upload.

Each of the white doors has full security, so you'll need to drill, saw, or C4 it. If you picked up keycards in the house, you can use those as well, but there are only two keycards and three doors; if you're unlucky, you'll need to break in the hard way. The most easily defended server room location is in a corner on the upper floor, next to the corner desk that would open the vault. If it's located in either of the other locations, it'll be much tougher.

Even on the base difficulty, the cops will send Shields at you. As such, you won't be able to simply hole up in the server room to force the cops to bottleneck, because the Shield will still take you down. However, if you stay near the server room and fall back into it when you can, you'll be able to stay together and work together to take down your enemies.

It's not as simple as waiting them out however. The cops will routinely shut down the power to the computer, and you'll have to interact with a nearby fuse box to fix it. They tend to shut down the power every 30 seconds or so, which means you'll need to leave the server room often. If possible, have your two strongest attackers out to flip the switches, while the other two stay back in the server room. If things get too hot, ignore the fuse box for a bit, especially in the middle of an assault; flipping the power just to get cut down won't help you.

One strategy seems a little counter intuitive and is risky, but tends to be overall safer than running around for fuse boxes. Designate two players to stay with the server room, and the other two can be floaters who roam the halls. If one of the two floaters go down, and if he's surrounded, do not revive him. It sounds strange, but the computer tends to take at least 10 minutes or longer to transfer the files only because of the constant stoppages; Bain will likely be able to get that player back after only two or three minutes. Ergo, it's less likely to involve more of your team being taken down in an effort to rescue the fallen member. Plus, when he responds, he'll be at full health and with full ammo.

Once the computer is done, deal with any remaining forces; don't move out until you're clear of assaults. Head up to the roof, and a helicopter will come to extract you.